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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

tetris

The town of Raven’s Bluff boasts
neither ravens nor a bluff. The mighty Wagnashi River is actually a
creek and the town’s claim to condominiums is a hotel trying to
upsell itself. Poorly. Given all that, I didn’t expect the history
of the town to have any real weight behind it but it turned out that
the creature lurking in the woods was real: all shifting fur and
claws, old and maddened with age. I made a door and sent it back home
halfway around the world, to one of those areas explorers think
they’ve mapped and understood.

The local trapper who got hold of me
through the email address Charlie set up for me months ago doesn’t
question whether it is gone, just thanks me and offers directions to
the nearest pawn shop when I ask. It turns out to be a couple of
towns away but it’s not hard to find someone offering me a ride and
no questions. I buy a few older handheld computer games and take them
back to Raven’s End, the hotel/condo development still renting
rooms. For cash. With no questions asked, which is generally how
magicians like it.

Jay is sitting on one of the two double
beds in the hotel room cross-legged when I enter. He looks to be
about ten and human, though is neither of those things as he is from
far Outside the universe and bound into my service. He doesn’t look
up from his phone when I enter.

“Jay.”

“I’m occupied.”

“With a game.”

“Yeah. I am achieving entelechy.”

I pause, the bag of games in hand, and
close the door carefully behind me before discarding shoes and coat.
“And that means?”

“Actuality. My true nature and not my
potential one,” he says, fingers dancing at inhuman speeds over the
phone.

“You’re getting a high score in a
computer game, aren’t you?”

“I might be.”

“I got some older games you might
want to play.”

He pauses the phone reluctantly, takes
the bag and checks the handheld games over, eyes widening at a few. I
arranged to win a small lottery a few days ago when we were short on
funds. Jay looks up. “They are nice. Thank you for them.”

He goes back to his phone. I give him
until the count of ten and reach out, raising his chin with a finger.
“Jay.”

“I am occupied,” he snaps.

“Since when are you occupied and not
busy?”

He blinks, then begins blushing a
little as the implications sink in. It has been a long time since he
tried to avoid speaking esses in front of me. “Occupied meanth very
buthy,” he says firmly.

“You could put that game on pause and
play these.”

“I thaid I wath buthy!”

“Jay.” I don’t raise my voice,
but a hint of power creeps under it. A magician can’t be other than
what they are. He flinches back, colour draining from his pale face
and whimpers softly, hands gripping his phone tightly. I sit down on
the bed beside him and he scoots to the side, trembling as he tries
to hide that he is trembling. “You’re scared of me. You’ve been
acting scared of me for a few days now and I don’t like that.”

He says nothing, teeth digging into his
lower lip. If he was human, he’d ben drawing blood. He’s tough
enough to take shotguns to the chest and barely bruise, but that’s
physical damage; the bindings between us hum with fear and
uneasiness.

“You only try and avoid esses that
much when you’re really scared of someone. Like a monster who might
eat you. Which means I did something recently, and probably forgot I
did that; sometimes magic has to protect a magician from themselves.”
No response. “And sometimes that has costs, but they’re not ones
I want my friends to pay. Please.”

“You did thomething bad to thome
bindingth,” he whispers, because he sees the world in bindings as
easily as we see light and hear sound. “Thomething bad, and did
worthe than unmake them and it’th all not falling apart and I’m
thcared!”

“I know you are. You’ve never been
scared of me before, have
you?”

Jay shakes his
head, not moving.

“Charlie was. I
am.” That wins a slow blink. “Being a magician is what I am, Jay.
The magic is just part of what I do.” I reach over, resting my hand
on his right hand, gently pull it off his phone. “You really think
I’d eat you given how you’d taste?”

That
wins a surprised giggle. “That’th why I don’t bathe,” he says
with a hesitant grin.

“Uh huh.” I
raise his right hand slowly toward his face. “I’m not saying to
not be afraid of me, Jay. But not this much, if you can. I’m saying
I won’t eat you, and I promise that.”

He relaxes
abruptly, letting out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding
and shoves his right thumb into his mouth to suck on it. That’s
new, damage I caused to his nature over a month ago. Until now, he’s
only done it under stress. This time it’s from relief. He doesn’t
suck on it long before removing it and reaching for the bag of games.

“You won’t eat
me even if I beat you in tetrith?” he says warily.

“I’ve never
played tetris.”

“Oh.”
Jay considers that. “I don’t think I thould be afraid of anyone
who hath never even played tetrith,” he says, and begins describing
how the game works even as he turns it on. We’re not all right: the
bindings that bind him to me and me to him are not even close to all
right, and he’s not able – or willing – to talk about whatever
I did that fractured them, but he relaxes as he describes the game,
has he play, shows me a few tricks and
beats every high score I try and set.

As
displays of strength go against magicians, it’s not one I consider
impressive but it seems to count for him so I don’t protest at all
as he insists I keep playing and beats me in every one of the games I
bought until he yawns after a good ten hours and falls dead asleep,
head resting on my shoulder. I put him into the bed slowly, leaving
the games beside it, and half-wonder how he’s going to react when
he finds out I’ve never played pacman.

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”